British Americans

The term "British American" is often used to refer to people living in the United States whose ancestry originated entirely or partially in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Orkney, and the Isle of Man). People who can trace at least some of their ancestry back to the inhabitants of Great Britain and what is now the United Kingdom are classified under this group for the purposes of demographic or historical study. Americans who speak English, Scottish, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish, as well as Orcadian, Manx, and Cornish.

According to estimates provided by the American Community Survey for the year 2020, a total of 1,934,397 individuals reported having British ancestry, in addition to 25,213,619 individuals who reported having English ancestry, 5,298,861 individuals who reported having Scottish ancestry, and 1,851,256 individuals who reported having Welsh ancestry. 10.5% of the entire population was made up of these groupings, which in total accounted for 34,298,133 people. An additional 31,518,129 people classified themselves as having Irish ancestry; however, this information does not discriminate between current Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in terms of their ancestral origins. Although the figures for Manx and Cornish ancestry are not broken out individually, the number of people who claimed having Manx ancestry prior to 1990 was 9,220, according to the census. This statistic does not include persons who reported having British ancestry in nations where British ancestry makes up a majority or plurality of the population, such as New Zealanders (21,575) or Australians (105,152). Overall, there has been a dramatic decrease, particularly when compared to the results of the census taken in 1980, in which 49.59 million persons declared having English ancestry.

Since 1980, when over 13.3 million people, or 5.9% of the total U.S. population, self-identified as "American" or "United States," this was counted under "not specified," which demographers regard as a serious under-count. This is because a large proportion of Americans of British descent have a tendency to identify as "American." This reaction has a significantly disproportionately high prevalence in the Upland South, which was first colonised by the British. Those who have heritage from many European countries could consider themselves to be members of a more contemporary and distinct ethnic group. Seven of the ten most popular family names in the United States in 2010 have their roots in England or have a possibly mixed background from other parts of the British Isles, while the other three have their roots in Spain.

Persons who are citizens of both the United Kingdom and the United States are considered to have dual citizenship and should not be confused with the other uses of the phrase "dual citizen," which relate to people who use the term in a completely other (although sometimes overlapping) meaning.